This blog used to be called EDL Extra. I was a supporter (neither a member nor a leader) of the EDL until 2012. This blog has retained the old web address.****************************************************************************************************************************************************************************************************

Tuesday, 20 February 2018

The
British leader of the Opposition
(Jeremy Corbyn) has been embroiled in what's
been called a “spy scandal”. This scandal involves Jeremy
Corbyn's alleged meetings with Czech “spies” in the 1980s.

In
terms of today's news and in response to a tweet from British
Conservative MP (a Ben Bradley), Jeremy Corbyn MP instructed his
solicitors to tell Mr Bradley to take down his “libelous” tweet
otherwise he'd be the victim of legal action.

So
what exactly did the tweet say? (The tweet has since been
deleted.)This:

“Corbyn
sold British secrets to communist spies… get some perspective
mate!! Your priorities are a bit awry!”

This
tweet was perhaps written in haste by Ben Bradley. It was posted in
an exchange with the fantastically named group, Far
Right Watch.
(Are Tory MPs also “Far Right” now? Is Far Right Watch itself Far
Left?)

As
it is, Jeremy Corbyn's “office” has admitted that he met a “Czech
diplomat” in the House of Commons. However, according to that
source, the
claim that Corbyn was

“an
agent, asset or informer for any intelligence agency is entirely
false and a ridiculous smear”.

Okay.
So why was a fairly insignificant British MP (a known Marxist
socialist) meeting a “Czech diplomat” in the 1980s? Corbyn didn't
even have a position in the Labour Party's Shadow Cabinet at the
time. Indeed outside of “radical socialist” groups and activities
(as well as meetings with “anti-imperialist” groups such as the
IRA and Sinn Féin), Corbyn had little importance in the British
parliamentary system. Thus surely this meeting was both a little odd.
And it must also have been a little... well,
unofficial.
Unless, of course, small-time MPs often met senior diplomats in the
House of Commons and elsewhere.

So
did Corbyn also met diplomats from South Africa, Chile,
etc. at the same time (i.e., the 1980s)? Or was he very choosy about
which kind of diplomats he met?

It's
very hard to know what's going with the Corbyn “spy scandal”.
There are members of the Corbyn Cult who'll defend him no
matter what.
And there are enemies of Corbyn who'll attack him “by any means
necessary”.

It's
also hard to say whether or not all - or indeed any - of the details
are true in this latest case against Corbyn.

For
example, even if Corbyn did have dealings with communist spies, I
doubt that he'd have “sold British secrets to ‘Communist spies’”;
as Ben Bradley claimed in his tweet. Any positive dealings Corbyn
would have had with communists (as with Iran, Hamas, Hezbollah, the
IRA, etc.) would have been for ideological and political reasons, not
for financial gain.

In
any case, supporters of Corbyn have boiled most of this story down to
the shady details of a single former Czech spy (or “intelligence
officer”). However, British newspapers have claimed that it is
documents
contained in the archives of Czech intelligence which
show that Corbyn met Czech spies on three occasions in the 1980s.

Now
it's of course possible that Corbyn didn't know that they were spies.
And even if he did, he might not have “fed them confidential and
important information”. What he might have done is simply
ideologically and politically sympathise with the Czech communist
state; which these spies - or diplomats - worked for.

*************************

Nonetheless,
it's certainly possible
that Corbyn did have dealings with communist spies.

Why?

The
answer to that is very simple.

Corbyn
was (or is) ideologically and politically sympathetic to communism;
as well as to the Soviet Union, Marx, Lenin, Trotsky, etc. So all
that would have given him very good reasons to liaise with communist
spies (as well as communists generally); just as it gave him a very
good reason to liaise with the the “anti-imperialist” and largely
Marxist IRA in the 1980s. And just as Corbyn didn't plant or make
bombs for the IRA, so he probably didn't “sell secrets” to
communist spies. Corbyn's relationships with “Britain's enemies”
would have been entirely political and ideological in nature.

Let
me offer more evidence for my position.

Many
people say “a man is known by the company he keeps”. Of course
that's not always true. However, it becomes truer when the person
you're discussing appoints one of his friends the Executive
Director of Strategy and Communicationsfor the
Labour Party and another friend the Campaign
Chief for
the same party; as Jeremy Corbyn did in early 2016. Both these
friends are self-described “communists” and fans of the Soviet
Union.

Mr
Milne was/is now Executive
Director of Strategy and Communications
for Corbyn and the Labour Party. His “communist tendencies” are
well-known in the United Kingdom.

In
terms of politics, Milne has been a systematic fan of Stalin and the
Soviet Union. Milne once claimed that
“history has been unkind to”Joseph
Stalin. He also gave the lowest number I've ever seen for the number
of people murdered by the Soviet socialist regime.

So
what about Jeremy Corbyn himself?

Take
Corbyn'sown
words;
as expressed in the House of Commons in the 1980s:

“...
I had an interesting meeting with an environmental campaigning group
from the Soviet Union.... those people felt that they had the power
to change the policies to stop the destruction of their own
environment. The policies of free-market economies... have led to the
pollution of the North sea and the Irish sea...”

So
Corbyn believed that environmental activists had more political power
in the Soviet Union than their equivalents did in the Western
democracies. What's more, Corbyn seems to have thought this simply
because of what was said to him during a single meeting.

In
retrospect, it's ironic that Corbyn said the above just two years
before the fall of the Soviet Union. This isn't a surprise, however.
Corbyn, at that time, had a more favourable opinion of the Soviet
Union than he had of the United Kingdom - at least under Margaret
Thatcher.

"Jeremy
Corbyn has clearly been fixated by the political ideology and tactics
of Leon Trotsky for some time, but perhaps he could now focus on the
rehabilitation of the Labour Party, which has been performing very
poorly in the polls since he became leader. Trotsky didn't have to
worry about the troublesome business of winning elections, but the
Labour Party does."

So,
to sum up.

If
Joe
Bloggs
(or John Doe) had met communist spies (or “Czech diplomats”) in
the 1980s, then none of this would matter that much. However, it's
possible that the “radical socialist” leader of the British
Labour Party (i.e., Jeremy Corbyn) did so. Now that's an entirely
different story...

Thursday, 8 February 2018

Saturday, 3 February 2018

The
British Conservative MP, Jacob Rees-Mogg, has just been caught up in
the middle of a violent scuffle while giving a talk at a British
university. This is the very same Mr Rees-Mogg who's been tipped to
be the next leader of the British Conservative Party.

He'd
been speaking at the University of Bristol's Politics and
International Relations Society when it was stormed by leftwing Red
Guards.

One
Bristol University student, a William Brown, said:

"These
people in balaclavas and sunglasses started shouting, things like
'Tory fascist'.

"They
were quite intimidating actually.

"They
were waving their hands around, shouting very loudly."

This
student also stated that a few punches were thrown.

The
same student added:

"Jacob
went to calm them down, I think he came out of it very well.

"He
was encouraging them to speak, without shouting, saying something
like 'I'm happy to talk if you want'."

One
other student, a Sebastian Salton, said:

"It
was interrupted by antifascists, I don't think it was assault, I
think people were trying to get him out.

"There
was some negotiating.

"He
went over to them and said 'lets not shout them down,' but they
weren't having any of it.

"They
were shouting 'racist, misogynist, homophobe, sexist'. They were
talking about austerity."

Will
Smith, another student, said:

"There
were people in balaclavas shouting 'fascist scum' and 'sexist'.

"He
was the first to approach them."

Rees-Moog
was stuck bang in the middle of all this. However, he said that he
wasn't “shaken or stirred” by the event. Rees-Moog also said that
“they were just rather shouty"; though “all is well”.
Despite that, some students described Rees-Moog as "looking
shaken up" after the event.

*********************************

So
guess what. These typical students yelled “Tory fascist”,
“fascist scum”, “sexist, “homophobe” and “Nazi” at an
elected British MP. Now isn't that highly original? Not really. You'd
think that these students would become a little self-conscious about
using these leftwing cliches or soundbites. Though since the the
leftwing politics of student life is effectively a middle-class Rite
of Passage, and because all rites of passage must take the same form,
then these actions are hardly surprising.

Most
leftwing students dress the same; act the same; and, more
importantly, think
the same.

As
ever, the Marxist Left isn't concerned with debate. It's concerned
with obliterating alternative political views. It often does that
with violence or, sometimes, with the “no platform” policy which
has often been in force in British universities. (It has only been
applied to the Far Right - never to the Far Left.) This policy was
established
by the National Union of Students in the early 1970s;
under the strong influence of the International Marxist Group (IMG)
and the International Socialists (IS). It's been used to ban a whole
host of speakers, groups and even academics.

What
happened to Jacob Rees-Mogg has happened countless times in our
universities since the 1960s. It's been happening since the Left has
been attempting to create (sometimes it's been very successful) a
“hegemony” in all these “Gramscian institutions”. All sorts
of people have been the victim of leftwing violence, intolerance and
political conformity: academics, MPs, politicians, political parties,
political and social groups, individuals, etc.

One
example of all this which always stuck in mind dates back to
1978
and concerned the biologist, researcher and naturalist, E.O. Wilson
(who, politically, is a liberal). His case parallels, very strongly,
the leftwing intolerance of
Steven Pinker
(also a liberal who's apparently donated
money
to the
Democratic
Party), the Canadian clinical psychologist and professor of
psychology, Jordan
Peterson,
etc. today.

E.O.
Wilson's book, Sociobiology:
The New Synthesis,
was
published in 1975. It rekindled the ancient nature-vs.-nurture
debate. Predictably, Wilson was accused of racism, misogyny, and even
sympathy for eugenics.

Not
surprisingly, this led to one incident in November 1978 in which E.O.
Wilson was physically attacked (during one of his lectures) by
members of the International Committee Against Racism, a front group
for the Marxist Progressive Labor Party. Ironically, Wilson said:

"I
believe...I was the only scientist in modern times to be physically
attacked for an idea."

What
Wilson said is false; as the example of scientists in the Soviet
Union, for one, shows. In the 1960s, other American scientists and
academics were also victims of leftwing violence and intolerance. (As
can be seen in the 'Political
Scientists' chapter
of Steven Pinker's book, The
Blank Slate: The Modern Denial of Human Nature.)
However, Wilson later said that he was very politically naïve at the
time and had no idea that he'd be attacked by the virulent and intolerant Marxist Left.

So,
bearing all that in mind, I wonder if professors, academics and other
leftwing supporters (whether passive or active) of all this believe
that it's a good thing that so many students are politically
conformist, intolerant and violent?

Is
it a good thing that being leftwing or a revolutionary socialist is a
middle-class Rite of Passage for so many students between the ages of
18 and 22?

Is
it a good thing that so many right-wing academics, groups and
individuals have their talks and seminars banned and have also even
been the victims of physical violence?

Do
they think it's a good think that many university departments are
effectively Gramscian
institutions
and that this has been the case going back to the 1960s – for some
60 or so years?

All
this is nothing new. It has a history.

In
the Germany of the 1930s, HitlerYouth
and other young Nazis ruled the roostin
German universities. Indeed all academics were Nazis; although some
were only nominallyso.

In
the 1940s in the Soviet Union, all academics were
Marxists/communists. And, again, young students often victimised all
political dissidents – even the ones who weren't political
dissidents.

Under
Chairman Mao (in the 1960s) we had the young Red Guards who
terrorised the university campuses and enforced their political will
on all students and indeed even on professors and academics.

And
today (in the UK) we have Momentum, Social Justice Warriors, the
Socialist Workers Party, etc. who, in their fight for tolerance,
peace and open-mindedness, indulge in extreme intolerance, violence
and closed-mindedness.

Yes,
it all sounds terribly familiar. Yet to those deeply embedded in
university environments (in which being leftwing - or at least
liberal left - is de
rigour),
it will all seem so terribly normal and acceptable. Of course it
will!

Friday, 2 February 2018

As
most readers will know, we've had many nightmare scenarios about
Brexit. Indeed we've had some very-rosy scenarios for the post-Brexit
period too. Therefore the main question in this piece is as follows:

Do
these economic nightmare scenarios primarily express the prior
political
views, values and positions of people on Brexit?

In most cases (though
not, of course, all), the answer to that question is 'yes'...

Thus the following isn't
a piece of economics. It's about economics. Specifically, it's about
some (or even many) of the economic statements on Brexit.

So
there aren't any forecasts in what follows. (Bar oneforecastabout
post-Brexit winners and losers.) There are, however, a few comments
on other people's forecasts. This means that there aren't any claims
to know what will happen after Brexit. However, there are comments on
those economists and politicians who do claim to know exactly what
will happen after Brexit.

Economics is, of course,
a highly complex business. There are an indefinite amount of
variables to consider when discussing any single economic issue. And
when it comes to forecasting about Brexit and post-Brexit...

Not only is economics
hugely complicated, economists are well-known for getting things
wrong. Their biggest mistakes come when economists indulge in
futurology (or prophesy). This is especially the case when strong
political and ideological views undergird their economic forecasts.

Economic
Narratives

One way around this
economic complexity is to have what political hipsters call a
“narrative”. That narrative will enable people to make sense of
the mass of data involved in economic arguments or claims. In other
words, people's narratives (or, more simply, their ideological and
political positions) will help simplify things. Their narratives will
also be loaded with values, theories and political causes. That too
will help in the process of simplification.

In any case, after Brexit
there'll surely be winners and losers.

That's not a surprise
because after every economic change – both big and small –
there'll be winners and losers. Indeed sometimes the winners change
places with the losers and vice versa.

As for economics and
economists.

Depending
on the economists concerned and their political affiliations or
biases, there have been many mutually-contradictory “studies” and
"surveys” on Brexit. That's not a surprise. Again, it's
largely because economics is so damn complex that one can find an
academic study to back up one's prior political position on Brexit
(or on the European Union itself). What's more, one can even
construct
an academic (or economic) study to back-up one's prior political
position.

Take Brexit and
immigration.

Immigration
& Economics

If an economist has a
strong political and/or ideological position on immigration, then
that's almost bound to have an effect on his economic positions (as
well as on his academic research generally).

For example, say that an
economist is

a believer in “open
borders”;

deeply distrustful
of the nation state;

against nationalism,
and also has a problem with patriotism;

an internationalist;

a
believer that all those who're against (mass) immigration are racist.

Isn't all this bound to
have an impact on his economic positions on immigration?

Similarly, take an
economist who's

againstopen
borders;

strongly in favour
of the nation state;

a patriot;

against mass
immigration for social – not just economic – reasons.

Isn't all this also bound
to have an effect on this economist's positions on immigration?

Consequently,
it can be said that (at least in some cases) economic
arguments about immigration can simply be masks for hiding the
underlying ideological/political
positions economists (as well as others) have on Brexit.

"the research
literature displays a broad consensus that in the long run Brexit
will make the United Kingdom poorer because it will create new
barriers to trade, foreign direct investment, and immigration”.

(Let's forget here that
the European Union is a big funder of British universities and that
many university departments are largely - or at least partly -
“Gramscian institutions” of the Left - or, in some cases, of the
Liberal Left.)

In theory at least, there
needn't be any “barriers to trade” with Europe after Brexit.
However, if there were to be any barriers, then the EU would be at
least partly responsible for them. And that would tell us much about
the EU's post-Brexit petulance and arrogance.

The “survey” also
mentions “foreign direct investment”. Again, why can't we
continue to invest in Europe? Moreover, what about the rest of the
world? For example, what about the United States and the
Commonwealth?

Another
example comes from a 2016 piece in The
Economist.
It
stated the
following:

"It is
plausible that Brexit could have a modest negative impact on growth
and job creation. However it is slightly more plausible that the net
impact would be modestly positive."

We can of course question
both the sources and the data here. Then again, we can do exactly the
same if it came to a report which stated the exact opposite. So that
wouldn't get us very far either.... That's unless we were economists
who had a hell of a lot of time on our hands. And even then, we'd
still have prior political biases and prejudices which could very
well influence our pronouncements, studies or surveys.

It's also said that the
EU facilitates intra-European financial services.

For example, we have EU
“passporting” for financial services.

TheFinancial
Times
said that this accounts for up to 71,000 jobs and £10 billion of tax
each year. It's also true that some banks have warned that they may
move elsewhere after Brexit. Though even here the obvious point has
to be stated. Namely: not
many Brexiteers have ever denied that there'll be losses/cons after
Brexit.
However, for every con, there may also be pros – or more gains.
Perhaps the pros will far outweigh the cons. Perhaps the gains will
far outweigh the losses. This can't be known beforehand; though
that's also true of the economic arguments for remaining in the EU.

Specifically, that
possible £10 billion tax loss may quickly be made up by savings (or
gains) resulting from our no longer sending money to the EU;
reducing/ending benefits payments for unemployed (or low-paid)
immigrants; cutting down on EU red tape for businesses; and so on.

As for the 71,000 jobs in
the EU-wide financial services (besides that being a guesstimate):
surely most of these people would immediately find jobs anyway.
Indeed they may not even loose them in the first place. Isn't it the
case that very few people in the financial services end up as
long-term (or even short-term) unemployed? Wouldn't these people
simply change their own employment arrangements?

"Brexit-induced
reductions in migration are likely to have a significant negative
impact on UK GDP per capita (and GDP), with marginal positive impacts
on wages in the low-skill service sector”.

So even this negative
scenario about lower immigration has a positive outcome; though, in
this example at least, only for workers in the “low-skill service
sector”.

Note the word “likely”
too; as in the phrase “likely to have a significant negative
impact”. Economics isn't a “hard science”; and its record when
it comes to prophesy (or futurology) has often been woeful;
especially when those economic prophesies are driven by political
positions or values.

As stated earlier,
economics is complex. It's often rendered gross and simple simply in
order to further political goals or causes – as in both the Brexit
and Remain positions.

So although there are
economic pros to large-scale immigration into the UK, there may be
far more cons. What's more, these cons may be mainly social in
nature.

On
the Leave side.

The
former Governor of the Bank of England, Mervyn King, once
said
(in December 2016) that the warnings of economic doom and gloom after
leaving the EU were over-the-top. He still believes that the UK
should leave the single market; as well as “probably” leave the
customs union. Doing these two things, according to Mr King, would
bring about more opportunities for the UK; and, in the process,
improve the UK's overall economic performance.

Other benefits of Brexit
have also been noted.

For example, we may well
be able to bring about more free-trade deals when unencumbered by the
rules and laws of the EU. A radically different immigration policy
may also financially benefit the UK. That is, the state may need to
pay less benefits to unemployed (or low-wage) immigrants – even if
we bear in mind, for example, the immigrants who work for the NHS.
(That number is often both over-exaggerated and overstressed.) There
would also be reduced regulations on businesses and reductions in
public spending generally. More relevantly, the UK would save a hell
of a lot simply because it would no longer be contributing so much
money to the EU budget.

Economic
Futurology

As
stated in the introduction, economics is complex. And because of
that, economists often get things wrong – sometimes massively
wrong.
This is the case at least partly because of the political values,
causes or ideologies which often drive the economic arguments and
studies of economists.

Take this example.

In
January 2017, the Chief Economist and the Executive Director of
Monetary Analysis and Statisticsat
the Bank of England, Andy Haldane, commented
upon
the bank's own bit of futurology about Brexit. The BoE claimed that
there would be an economic downturn. However, that claim wasn't about
the post-Brexit era. It was about the period before, during and
immediately after the Brexit referendum itself. As for Andy Haldane,
he said that the BoE's forecast was very inaccurate. That market
downturn (after the Brexit referendum) turned out to be an upturn.

Interestingly enough,
Haldane did accept that economics was “to some degree in crisis”.
The thing is, that crisis had nothing to do with the referendum or
even (directly) to do with the EU. It was due to economists and
politicians failing to predict the financial crisis of 2007 to 2008.
Nonetheless, Haldane did say that in the future Brexit would harm
economic growth. Despite that, Haldane had already said that the
near-term forecasts were wrong. So can't we now say that his
longer-term forecasts are even more likely to be inaccurate (or plain
false)?

David
Miles (at Imperial College London) agrees with this scepticism
towards economists. (Though he's an economist himself!) He responded
to Haldane by saying that that there's no “crisis
in economics”.
Why is that? It's because (according to Miles) economists never claim
to to forecast what will happen (at least in precise terms) in the
future. David Miles went on to say that that most people know (or at
least most economists know) that short-term forecasts (like that of
the BoE) are unreliable. And if that's the case with short-term
forecasts, then surely that's even truer of long-term ones - such as
Brexit.

Thomas
Sampson (of the London School of Economics) also agrees with this. He
said
that it's difficult to know what will happen during the transitional
process to Brexit. Indeed he turns my own statement on its head by
saying that that long-term Brexit forecasts are (or will be!) more
reliable than the short-term ones.

In
any case, David Miles's earlier statement must actually be normative
(or prescriptive) in nature. That is, he must surely be saying that
economists should
be more modest when it comes to their forecasts. As it is, however,
that's not usually the case. Economists can often be far from modest;
especially when political causes, values and ideology are driving
their economic forecasts.

Monday, 22 January 2018

Tuesday, 9 January 2018

In
late October, 2017, a professor by the name Bryan Van Norden had an
essay published by the magazine Aeon.
That essay is called 'Western
philosophy is racist'.
The piece has been debated all over the place. It has (so far) been
shared 30,824times
on Facebook and generated466
responses underneath it. (The magazine describes itself this
way:
“Aeon
has established itself as a unique digital magazine, publishing some
of the most profound and provocative thinking on the web.”)

“translator
of Chinese philosophical texts, scholar of Chinese and comparative
philosophy, and public intellectual [who] taught for twenty years at
Vassar College but is currently Kwan Im Thong Hood Cho Temple
Visiting Professor at Yale-NUS College in Singapore”.

“Mainstream
philosophy in the so-called West is narrow-minded, unimaginative, and
even xenophobic.”

Thus,
in this response-piece, I want toreturn
fire by partially replicating Van Norden's own political rhetoric
with some of my own. (Not that rhetoric and argumentation can't
sometimes live together in the same space.)

So here goes.

Accusing
people, groups or institutions of racism seems to be a sport (or
fashion) for far too many academics nowadays. It's almost as if it's
seen as a safe way of proving one's anti-racist credentials before
some even purer and more zealous anti-racist puts the boot in. That
often means that the more racist people, groups or institutions one
can find, the more anti-racist and politically pure one becomes.
Indeed this sport of anti-racism has become so omnipresent and
extreme that the anti-racist revolution has even begun to eat its own
children. Thus we have many and various anti-racist Inquisitions (of
all those
evil white racist bigots)
on our hands.

It seems that Professor
Bryan Van Norden himself has felt the need to add his own little bit
to this pious anti-racism blood sport.

'Western
philosophy is racist'

The
title of Professor Bryan Van Norden's essay is 'Western philosophy is
racist'. The sub-heading also rhetoricallystates:

“Academic
philosophy in ‘the West’ ignores and disdains the thought
traditions of China, India and Africa. This must change.”

The title is itself
racist and it is so in many ways.

For starters, the West
has been more open to other cultures, traditions and epochs than
almost any civilisation in history.

Still, it's clear that
Van Norden and many others don't apply the same logic to other
traditions and cultures which they apply to the West. That means that
racism elsewhere will never become apparent simply because it's never
even broached. As usual, the West has categories and judgments
applied to it which won't be applied to any other culture or
tradition.

Van
Norden would quickly find (that's if he doesn't already know) that
numerous other cultures or traditions have been just as introspective
and indeed racist as the West. Unless, that is, it's definitionally
impossible for non-white (or non-Western) cultures to ever be racist.
Indeed many leftwing academics and theorists have attempted various
versions of that definitional trick. Thus, just as in America today,
if “only
whites can be racist”,
then so it may also be the case that only Western philosophy can be
racist. (Perhaps non-Western cultures are “prejudiced,
though not racist”.)

So isn't about time
leftwing or “progressive” academics and intellectuals either
looked in the mirror or attended a course in self-referential logic?
Alternatively, since Van Norden is a fan of Edward W. Said (see
later), it can be said that his words come perilously close to being
outright Occidentalist in nature.

Van
Norden's Political Thesis

According to Professor
Van Norden, “mainstream philosophy” is “narrow-minded,
unimaginative, and even xenophobic” because it ignores the

“rich
philosophical traditions of China, India, Africa, and the Indigenous
peoples of the Americas”.

Indeed
it's “nothing but a temple to the achievement of white males”.
It's also strange that Van Norden uses the ironic/questioning words
“the so-called West”; which hint at the possibility that the West
doesn't really exist. He then goes straight ahead and generalises
about the West as if it most certainly does exist. Indeed it seems
that Van Norden's West
exists in a very determinate and severely circumscribed form.

All
this basically means that Professor Van Norden's case against Western
philosophy is political, not philosophical. Indeed he lays his
political cards on the table when he calls his position “a
multicultural manifesto”.

In terms of another of
his political positions, Van Norden writes:

“When
the ancient philosopher Diogenes was asked what city he came from, he
replied: ‘I am a citizen of the world.’”

This
seems to mean that Van Norden is an Internationalist of some kind.
Perhaps he's also an International Socialist.

Van
Norden backs up his multicultural
manifesto
when he says that

“to
attract an increasingly diverse student body, and to remain
culturally relevant, philosophy must recover its original
cosmopolitan ideal”.

And as an antidote to
racism, Van Norden wants Western philosophers to study

Indeed as Norden says,
all this is really about “greater diversity”, not philosophy.

Van
Norden continues his political theme by citing Peter K J Park's book,
Africa,
Asia, and the History of Philosophy: Racism in the Formation of the
Philosophical Canon...
I see. As most people now know, the Leftwing/“Progressive”
Academy - which doesn't yet include philosophy departments (i.e., if
Van Norden's thesis is correct) - got to work on the Western
“literary Canon” decades ago. So now it must be time for
philosophy! That leftwing/progressive “hegemony” (to use Antonio
Gramsci's word)
isn't quite complete yet. This means that philosophy is next in line.
(At least in those American departments that aren't devoted to
post-structuralism/Deconstruction, Continental Philosophy,
postmodernistphilosophy,etc.)
And that's Van Norden's political purpose – both in this essay and
generally in his professional life.

Despite
all the above, many people will question my bifurcation of philosophy
and politics; and that in itself is a political position. That denial
of any separation of philosophy (or anything else for that matter)
from politics has, of course, become de
rigueurand
hugely widespread in the last 30 years or so (especially in British
and American universities). It's had a far more negative affect on
philosophy (i.e., its politicisation and “dumbing-down”) than any
ostensible racism towards non-Western philosophy. Indeed the
embracing of the idea that “everything is political” has given
activists the perfect excuse to make
everything political
(in some kind of self-fulfilling prophesy). That means that there's
nothing to hold academics or philosophers back once they accept the
essentially Marxist catechism that everything
is political.
And that seems to be what Van Norden has himself done.

Western
Philosophy's Racist Turn

This
is where Van Norden's “Whig history” comes to thefore.
So let's put Van Norden's words and positions in the context of this
passage from Professor
David Cannadine:

“Whig
history was, in short, an extremely biased view of the past: eager to
hand out moral judgements, and distorted by teleology, anachronism
and present-mindedness.”

Thus Van Norden quite
literally blames the racism of Western philosophy on the German
philosopher Immanuel Kant and what he calls his “defenders”.

Firstly Kant.

Van Norden claims that
Kant was “notoriously racist”.

So
here's a professor parading his 20th century scientific wisdom and
21st century political piety by applying such things to a philosopher
who lived in the 18th century. Yes, Van Norden states (or perhaps
hints) that Kant should
have known that
race isn't a “scientific category”.

Now
for the defenders
of Kant

Here
we also have a professor indulging in the most crude ad
hominem
possible: one aimed at philosophers. Namely, Van Norden states that
Kant's defenders

“consciously
rewrote the history of philosophy to make it appear that his critical
idealism was the culmination toward which all earlier philosophy was
groping”.

In terms of racism, Van
Norden then tells us that

“European
intellectuals increasingly accepted and systematised views of white
racial superiority that entailed that no non-Caucasian group could
develop philosophy”.

This,
again, is anti-racist Whig history. Van Norden is applying the
“cultural logic” of the early 21st century (to rephrase words
from Fredric Jameson) to Kant (who died in1804)
and early 19th century philosophers. That is, he's claiming that
these people were racists in the 20th century sense of the term. He's
also applying values and judgements which belong to the 21st century
to philosophers of the 18th and early 19th centuries. This pious
retrospectivism is something that countless (often leftwing/radical)
theorists and academics - from historians to anthropologists - have
frowned upon when the victims/subjects were non-white people.
However, it seems to be okay when the victims/subjects are Dead White
Males who lived in the 18th
and 19th centuries.

Van Norden does indeed
move on to the early 20th century and the racism of the English
philosopher, G.E. Moore.

Firstly Van Norden
writes:

“When
the Indian philosopher Surendra Nath Dasgupta read a paper on the
epistemology of Vedanta to a session of the Aristotelian Society in
London, Moore’s only comment was: ‘I have nothing to offer
myself. But I am sure that whatever Dasgupta says is absolutely
false.’”

G.E.
Moore is a single philosopher and Van Norden quotes a single
off-the-cuff comment from this Englishman. Moore (as far as I know)
never wrote a paper dismissing Indian philosophy. He never claimed to
know his stuff when it came to this subject. Thus what he said about
it is pretty much irrelevant.
If Moore had written a paper on Indian philosophy (or even discussed
it in a paper), then that would have been a different matter
entirely. (Incidentally, G.E. Moore had
an important influence
on the“progressive”
Bloomsbury Group - a group which had “very modern attitudes”
towards feminism, sexuality, pacifism and economics.)

So,
yes, it was “a joke between colleagues” said by a philosopher who
never wrote on Indian philosophy and who never claimed to be an
expert. Besides which, even Moore's “joke” wasn't about Indian
philosophy as
a whole.
It was aimed at a single Indian philosopher (Surendra Nath Dasgupta)
and what Van Norden himself calls a single “Indian philosophical
system”. So Professor Van Norden is using extremely flimsy
circumstantial evidential as a pretext for his huge political and
academic call to arms.

“‘philosophy’
is a word of Greek origin, it refers only to the tradition that grows
out of the ancient Greek thinkers”.

Now if that's racist,
then so too are protons, hurricanes and the number 5. The first
statement is the literal truth; and even the second clause is pretty
innocuous – though obviously not to an anti-racist like Van Norden.

The same is true of Van
Norden's second paraphrase.

He tells us that Nicholas
Tampio

“pronounced
that Philosophy originates in Plato’s Republic'”.

Since
earlier Peone stressed the
word 'philosophy',
perhaps this is basically what Tampio means too. Or, at the least,
perhaps Peone was saying Western
philosophy is, well, western,
not that philosophy itself can
only be western.
Yet the same is also true of Chinese/Indian philosophy. That is,
there'll be elements of Chinese/Indian philosophy that are utterly
peculiar to it. So does that mean that if a Chinese/Indian
philosopher - or academic - stated this fact (or gave an example),
then he too would be a racist?

Orientalism/Occidentalism

Van
Norden informs us of one of his own political influences: Edward W
Said. The professor is particularly inspired by Edward Said's theory
of Orientalism.
Thus Van Norden quotes Said in this way:

In terms of the specifics
of this Van Norden's essay and the influence of Edward Said, it can
be said that the two writers view both negative and positive accounts
of the “Orient” as being equally bad.

Van Norden even sees the
philosophers Martin Heidegger and Jacques Derrida within this Saidian
context of “Western Orientalism”. This may seem odd to many fans
of Heidegger and Derrida. That's because both philosophers were
influenced by what's often called “Eastern philosophy”. (In fits
of positive Orientalism, many commentators and philosophers have
over-exaggerated this non-Western influence on both Heidegger and
Derrida - though especially on Heidegger.)

Van Norden quotes the
following passage from Heidegger, which he deems to be racist:

“The
often-heard expression ‘Western-European philosophy’ is, in
truth, a tautology. Why? Because philosophy is Greek in its nature; …
the nature of philosophy is of such a kind that it first appropriated
the Greek world, and only it, in order to unfold.”

Now what about Jacques
Derrida?

Strictly
speaking, although Derrida is deemed to be racist (at least in terms
of his position on non-Western philosophy), it would be better to
class the following passage (in adherence to Van Norden's political
theory) as being a case of positive
Orientalism.
As Van Norden himself puts it:

“...
on a visit to China in 2001, Jacques Derrida stunned his hosts (who
teach in Chinese philosophy departments) by announcing that ‘China
does not have any philosophy, only thought.’ In response to the
obvious shock of his audience, Derrida insisted that ‘Philosophy is
related to some sort of particular history, some languages, and some
ancient Greek invention. … It is something of European form.’...”

This means that Van
Norden (in contradistinction to many Heideggerians, fans of Derrida
and post-structuralists/Deconstructors generally) believes that both
Heidegger's and Derrida's words on this subject

“are
as condescending as talk of 'noble savages’, who are untainted by
the corrupting influences of the West, but are for that very reason
barred from participation in higher culture”.

This
means that both Heidegger and Derrida would have be trapped in Van
Norden's pure/extreme anti-racist snare. Had Heidegger and Derrida
ignored
non-Western philosophy/thought, then Van Norden would have classed
them as “racist”. They didn't ignore it. Yet Van Norden still
believes that they had a “noble savage” (i.e., positive
Orientalist) view of non-Western philosophy/thought. So either way,
Heidegger and Derrida couldn't win. Indeed Van Norden has placed
himself in a holier-than-thou position in which even Derrida – the
Prophet of the Other - is deemed to have been a racist.

“This
thought calls upon the ethical relationship - a nonviolent
relationship to the infinite as infinitely other, to the Other - as
the only one capable of opening the space of transcendence and of
liberating metaphysics...

“Incapable
of respecting the Being and meaning of the other, phenomenology and
ontology would be philosophies of violence. Through them, the entire
philosophical tradition, in its meaning and at bottom, would make
common cause with oppression and with the totalitarianism of the
same. The ancient clandestine friendship between light and power, the
ancient complicity between theoretical objectivity and
technico-political possession. 'If the other could be possessed,
seized, and known, it would not be the other. To possess, to know, to
grasp are all synonyms of power.' To violence and metaphysics see and
to know, to have and to will, unfold only within the oppressive and
luminous identity of the same... providing an alibi for the
historical violence of light: a displacement of technicopolitical
oppression in the direction of philosophical discourse.”

Yes, the anti-racist
revolution is truly eating its own children.

So where does Edward Said
and Van Norden's position leave Western philosophers and other
academics? Perhaps they should embrace Marxism, Freudianism and the
work of Michel Foucault - as Edward Said himself did. Perhaps only
then would their comments on non-Western histories, peoples and
cultures be politically pure.

What Van Norden must be
arguing, then, is that non-Western philosophy is (in at least many
important respects) indistinguishable from Western philosophy.
However, if he doesn't claim that, then how can he sustain his entire
position as commented upon so far?

So let's recap Van
Norden's political position.

Racists dismiss
non-Western philosophy as not being philosophy at all. That,
according to Van Norden, is obviously wrong. Positive Orientalists
(like Heidegger and Derrida), on the other hand, say that non-Western
thought is indeed something different; though still good and a
worthwhile subject of study. According to Van Norden, that position
is also wrong.

Oriental
Occidentalism

In addition to all that,
Van Norden appears not to realise that there's also been a long
tradition of Occidentalism in the non-Western world. Edward Said
himself - it can easily be argued - simply added to that
Occidentalist position. (As did, for example, the black
“essentialist”, Franz Fanon.)

Here's one definition of
Occidentalism:

“Occidentalism
refers to dehumanizing stereotypes of the Western world, Europe, the
Americas, Australia, New Zealand and South Africa.”

Just to give a couple of
examples.

In
China we have the case of 'Traditions Regarding Western Countries' in
the Twenty-Four
Histories(from
the 5th century onward) in which Chinese knowledge of the West didn't
venture beyond Syria. (At least according
to Dr Alastair Bonnett.)
In this period, then, China's knowledge of the West was severely
limited. Indeed curiosity about - and research into – the West was
frowned upon by China's rulers right up until the 19th
century. Not surprisingly, Westerners were seen as “barbarians”
long before they had experienced the British empire.

Perhaps
more relevantly, much of the politics of “anti-colonialist”
theorists is very Occidentalist in nature. However,
Marxists/leftwingers and Edward Said himself would have said that all
this was an entirely reactive
response to “Western imperialism”. (Can that really be said of
Chinese Occidentalism, which dates back hundreds of years before
British empire?) In that case, perhaps much Western Orientalism was
reactive too.

One
can also find much Occidentalism
in Islam, Chinese Maoism, and Japanese nationalism.
Were all these reactive
in
nature? Namely, are left-leaning academics claiming that Western
Orientalism isn't
reactive;
whereas non-Western
Occidentalism is reactive?
Wouldn't that be another neat, racist (i.e., anti-Western/white) and
Manichean division?

Conclusion

Let's give one final
example from Bryan Van Norden.

He tells us that a
philosophy professor (“in a mainstream philosophy department in the
US Midwest”) once said:

“This
is the intellectual tradition we work in. Take it or leave it.”

Now,
every faculty on the planet has its own focus and specialisms –
such as Black Studies or what's studied at the University of London
School of Oriental and African Studies. Yet, according to Van Norden,
this rejection of non-Western philosophy (Chinese philosophy in this
case) is an example of “thinly veiled racism”. Really? If someone
in a Russian Studies Department wanted to be “inclusive” and
broaden things out by, for example, including the Hungarian language
or literature, would that also be
thinly-veiled racism
towards Hungarians if that request were rejected? Should the UK and
US departments which concentrate on Subaltern Studies also be more
inclusive? Or, more relevantly, should philosophy departments which
concentrate on what's called Continental
Philosophy broaden
their own horizons by allowing in professors who are experts on the
analytic philosopher Willard Van Orman Quine, the (analytic)
philosophy of science or the (analytic) philosophy of mind?

I've just mentioned the
specialist nature of literally all university departments.

Perhaps the fact (if it
is a fact) there are only a few philosophy departments which
specialise in non-Western thought is partly because many other
university departments have taken over that job. In addition, there
are countless university departments which offer “studies” which
advance the political causes that Van Norden believes in. (For
example, Black Studies, Post-Colonial Studies, Subaltern Studies,
Deconstruction, Critical Race Theory, Ethnic Studies, Gender Studies,
etc.) In fact, these positions or studies rule the roost in many
American university departments and even in the entire universities
themselves.

Yet Professor Van Norden
wants more!

He
wants a multiculturalist hegemony
which is much more loyal to his own “multicultural manifesto”.

Well, in many respects
that multiculturalist hegemony already exists and has done since at
at least the 1980s. However, as I said, Van Norden wants a stronger,
more widespread and more complete hegemony – one that must now also
include all American and British philosophy departments.